Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.

Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

I am far too much in doubt about the present, far too perturbed .about the future, to be otherwise than profoundly reverential about the past.

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.

The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.